This is my experience and what’s going on with me. I’m not a doctor or medical professional, so don’t assume this will work for you or blindly apply what I’m doing in the hopes you will have the same results. My results are not guaranteed.
Additionally, I recently did a video, as it’s easier to talk and talk and talk about this. Might be easier to watch the video, but I also wanted to do a blog post! Anyway, I’m including the video here regardless! So enjoy my cute chubby face, jk.
This post is really about my weight loss/healthy lifestyle attempt goals. 🥴
Some context and a boring introduction to it all 😏(Feel free to skip straight to what I ate)
Without further ado … this is horrible, but for the longest time (I’m talking years), I have been eating horribly unhealthy. Fast food is my go to! I’m an emotional eater and of course all the crappy foods are what trigger those good temporary and short term feels that make me feel pretty good sometimes. And that has been my drive for that horrible lifestyle.
Well a few months ago, I got some bloodwork done because I was suspicious that my thyroid was being a jerk.
To give some context, I was having trouble (even when I felt I was drastically reducing my calories) to lose weight. I also started feeling cold a lot randomly, like abnormally cold, which wasn’t a thing for me really before. That is one of the symptoms for thyroid issues. I also had like numbing feels sometimes in my hands and feet, which I want to say is another symptom.
Anyway, you know how you do your thing … and by thing I mean go to the internet and put your symptoms, and then it spits out your sudden terminal illness … well mine was thyroid issues when I was searching about my symptoms and how I couldn’t lose weight.
So shortly after that, I ended up getting blood work done from Quest after I got a promotional email where the thyroid blood test was like on sale (before this I had no idea you could have blood work done on your own and without a doctors order, I’m naive) and some levels seemed a little high, but those tests are not that specific.
So after that, I made an actual doctors appointment and my doctor sent me to have a whole panel done and included thyroid. Around when I got the lab work done, I was taking a bunch of supplements. To summarize, some of those results had my T3 and TSH both high, which is kind of weird from what I’ve researched. Usually for thyroid stuff, I want to say those are supposed to contradict each other, eg. T3 will be high while TSH is low, or vice versa.
I could be wrong though and just not remembering the results correctly. And I am too lazy to find that actual info right now, so moving on … we thought that was weird. But I had also read that certain supplements sometimes interfere with the accuracy of bloodwork, so because of that, my doctor and I planned that I would eat healthier and try to lose some weight in the next couple of months and stop taking all those supplements I was taking (I would get what I needed from foods instead). I would then, after that, get blood work done again, and with that plan my results would be as accurate as possible.
Given my sugar levels (which indicated I’m pre-diabetic) being high, eating healthier and dropping weight suddenly became even more important to me for that next bloodwork draw.
After my blood work results (especially seeing that the results said I was pre-diabetic) my plan became to try and eat clean to reduce all the stuff that was high as much as possible by the next bloodwork draw. I also planned (insert clown emoji here) that throughout that time I would exercise to get the weight down even quicker.
I looked up what kind of foods are recommended for thyroid issues and also people who are diabetic and that is kind of what I based what my diet would be on. Now mind you, this is a super lame and boring diet, but it works for me.
I don’t encourage everyone eat this, I’m just sharing what I’m doing. When I eat clean, I do the same thing every day because it makes it easier (that’s what I think most people would consider to be boring and annoying about it) … like getting the same things when grocery shopping and just getting the routine down and not having to think too much like “what am I having today or tomorrow?” and blah blah blah. Eating the same thing every day is just easier, and has less thinking involved.
PS. I also decided to do Intermittent Fasting when eating clean.
PSS. Besides riding my stationary bike like 1x every 3 weeks, if that, the plan for exercise went out the window. That pretty much means the weight I’ve lost has been mostly due to my eating and those modifications.
The Plan
My initial plan was to eat clean for 3 weeks at a time, and then have a week to binge.
I did that like 2 or 3 times. (3 weeks clean eating + 1 week binge was resulting in like a 7-10 lb loss).
Then I decided to try a new plan to make it less miserable (remember I’m an emotional eater and not eating bad was so sad LOL) and that plan changed to eating clean during the week, and I would give myself 1 day a week to binge. But this way, I figured would be better for me, as the binge day would arrive sooner than waiting 3 weeks.
Currently, as of Monday 8/21/23, the plan changed again to just eating clean all the time with no indication of when the next binges would be, because the one day a week for binging kind of got out of control and I was just going crazy for more than 1 day and started to backtrack a bit, or at least I felt I was.
I recently got crazy and planned to eat clean non-stop until my blood work in November 2023, with the hopes of losing a bunch of weight too as a bonus! I was really strong on this plan at the beginning of this week, but then today (Friday 8/25) ended up going to Denny’s with my Momma :D, LOL.
Not saying that’s it for that whole plan, just that I let myself have a treat today. Tomorrow I start eating clean again with no indication of my next binge/cheat meal.
The Actual Diet 🍽
Anyway, my diet consists and has consisted of :
*** Bananas and plain greek yogurt with Monk Fruit for sweeting.
*** Cucumbers with lemon and pink salt
*** Strawberries
*** Salmon and lettuce (I don’t really like other veggies, so this is my type of salad). I use lemon for dressing to not consume much that is processed or with high sugars (aka most salad dressings).
***Raw oats with flax seeds, chia seeds, walnuts, almonds, plain unsweetened coconut milk, monk fruit for sweeting, and sometimes when I’m not being too lazy I’ll add berries.
This ends up being right under 2000 calories per day, give or take, and obviously that also depends on how much of all that you eat.
My Intermittent Fasting has been different every week. I for sure do the 8 hour eating window of IF, but the times have either been from 12 pm to 8 pm. When I want to change it up and eat earlier, I’ve done 10 am – 6 pm. : )
With this eating clean I’ve managed to drop about 25 lbs from April 10th (210 lbs) to Aug 9 (184.2 lbs) approximately, all without not working out, really.
In Summation …
I’m planning on keeping this on until my blood work and hoping that everything will be in the norm range come November 2023. I might be being too optimistic, but I’m a dreamer. I also believe in miracles and this diet that’s apparently taking me places.
This post might be super confusing, hopefully you figure out what I was trying to say and don’t give up reading it because of all my nonsense.